Chương 18: Chapter 17

Ling Tian settled his feet again and raised the bronze weapon. The damaged pine waited without comment. His next several strikes were slower than the first. Not weaker, necessarily, but deliberate. Ling Tian stopped treating the weapon as a heavy object he needed to force through the target and began paying attention to the entire movement connecting his feet to the point of impact.

He adjusted the distance between his stance and the trunk, experimented with how much weight should shift onto the forward leg, and changed the timing of his hip rotation by fractions that would have looked meaningless to an observer. The results were not meaningless. When he swung mostly with his arms, the weapon struck hard but pulled badly against his shoulders. When he initiated too much from the hips, his balance deteriorated at the end of the motion.

A stance that was too wide increased stability but made rotation slower, while standing too narrow turned the recoil into an unpleasant reminder that his ankles remained important structural components. Earth Qi softened the consequences of those mistakes. It did not erase them. Ling Tian appreciated that. A system without feedback was difficult to improve. He struck again. The bronze scabbard crashed into the same damaged section of trunk, sending another burst of pale splinters across the clearing.

This time, the movement felt cleaner. The impact traveled through the weapon, spread into his arms, and dispersed smoothly down through his frame before entering the packed earth beneath his feet. Much better. He stepped back and repeated it. Again. Then again. The dead tree gradually became less of a target and more of an instructional diagram. Ling Tian discovered that his grip should remain firm without becoming rigid. Clenching too tightly made his forearms absorb unnecessary vibration.

He learned that allowing the weapon's momentum to carry naturally through the strike produced better results than attempting to stop it immediately upon contact. He also learned that an overhead swing looked satisfyingly dramatic but left him dangerously exposed if the imaginary opponent survived long enough to object. The low horizontal strike was different. Ling Tian tested it against a section of trunk roughly level with his own waist. The bronze weapon slammed into the wood with a dense, ugly crack.

He felt the impact settle deeply through the tree rather than merely damaging the surface. Ling Tian stopped. His eyes moved toward the height of the strike. Roughly knee level on an adult. That was worth remembering. He stepped away from the trunk for a moment. The exercise had started as a structural test. It was becoming difficult to ignore the combat implications.

Only a few days earlier, Ling Tian's options against an ordinary adult attacker would have been limited to running, hiding, begging, or dying in whatever order circumstances allowed. The original body had been too weak even for meaningful resistance. That was no longer true. A full-force strike from the sealed bronze sword could break hardened timber. Human bone was not hardened timber. Ling Tian looked down at his hands. The fingers were still small. His wrists still looked thin.

Nothing about the body suggested danger. Yet the mechanics had changed. If he struck someone in the leg, the result could be catastrophic. A blow to the ribs might cripple them. A strike to the skull could easily become fatal. That realization did not make Ling Tian feel powerful. It made him cautious in an entirely different direction. He had spent the first several days thinking almost exclusively about dangers other people posed to him. Cultivators. Mountain beasts. Huo Jin's suspicious necklace.

The enormous entity hidden within the storm. Now, for the first time, Ling Tian had to account for the possibility that panic on his side could kill someone who did not deserve it. Power did not only improve survival. It also increased the cost of mistakes. He filed that away with the rest of the morning's lessons. Then he returned to the tree. The physical experiment was not finished. Ling Tian continued striking, though the mood had changed slightly.

He no longer swung simply because the destruction was satisfying. Each blow became another attempt to refine the movement while maintaining control. Horizontal. Diagonal. Overhead. Recover stance. Check wrist. Check shoulders. Repeat. The damage accumulated steadily. The original indentation had become a broad crater. Cracks spread outward through the dead wood, following old weaknesses within the grain.

Ling Tian occasionally paused to inspect them, partly because he wanted to understand the results and partly because he had no desire to stand directly beneath a falling tree when it finally stopped cooperating. His arms began to burn. The sensation was familiar now. Ling Tian kept the pace controlled and waited. The Earth Qi inside his Dantian responded after several more strikes, sending another cool pulse through his shoulders and forearms. The sharp edge of fatigue receded. Ling Tian resumed.

That was when the exercise became dangerous. Not immediately. Nothing felt wrong. His breathing remained heavy but manageable. His joints felt stable. His grip remained strong. Every time muscle fatigue accumulated, the Earth Qi reduced it enough for him to continue. So he continued. Strike. Recover. Strike again. The tree absorbed blow after blow. Ling Tian lost track of how many. The rhythm became almost meditative. The weapon rose. His hips turned. Bronze met wood. Recoil entered the body. Earth Qi dispersed it.

Reset. Again. A deeper crack suddenly split through the trunk. Ling Tian stopped. The damaged tree had developed a fracture running almost halfway around its circumference. He stepped to one side and studied the angle. One more good strike might do it. Ling Tian adjusted his feet. His hands settled naturally around the bronze hilt and scabbard. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. He breathed once. Then swung. The impact sounded different.

Not a sharp crack. A deep, tearing snap. The trunk lurched. Ling Tian's eyes widened. He moved backward immediately. For half a second, the upper section remained standing. Then gravity remembered its responsibilities. The dead pine tilted across the edge of the plateau and crashed into the ground with enough force to shake loose dust from nearby branches. Smaller limbs shattered beneath its weight, and a cloud of dry needles and debris rolled outward across the clearing.

Ling Tian stood several meters away, staring. The silence that followed felt strangely large. He slowly lowered the bronze weapon. The remaining stump reached above his waist. The broken section was thicker than his torso. Much thicker. Ling Tian walked toward it and crouched beside the fracture. This had not been rotten wood. Weathered, yes. Dead, certainly. But the interior remained hard enough that he would once have needed an axe and considerable time to cut through it.

He had just beaten it apart with a sealed sword. Ling Tian touched one of the fractured fibers. His expression became thoughtful. The result established the upper edge of another category. He possessed enough striking power to destroy heavy wood. Enough structural reinforcement to survive delivering those strikes. Enough recovery to repeat them far longer than a normal child could. He was still insignificant compared with genuine cultivators. That distinction remained critical.

The scaled creature pulling the Yan carriage could probably produce more force by scratching itself. Huo Jin, despite apparently having his cultivation quietly drained, still carried more spiritual energy than Ling Tian could comfortably measure. But compared with ordinary mortals? The answer was becoming uncomfortable. Ling Tian was no longer physically ordinary. Not even close. He rose from beside the stump. The sealed bronze sword suddenly felt different in his hands. Not lighter. More serious.

It had started the morning as a defective asset. Now he knew what happened when the defect met sufficient leverage. A blade would certainly be better in some situations. For immediate self-defense, though, several kilograms of ancient bronze moving at supernatural speed had compelling arguments of its own. Ling Tian rested the weapon against one shoulder. Then noticed his hand trembling. He frowned. The tremor was slight at first. Probably residual vibration from the repeated impacts.

Ling Tian opened and closed his fingers. The movement felt wrong. Weak. He flexed again. Still weak. The Earth Qi pulsed. Nothing changed. That caught his attention. Every previous episode of muscular fatigue had responded noticeably to the deposit. This did not. Ling Tian lowered the weapon. A strange hollowness spread through his arms. His stomach clenched sharply. He inhaled. The world shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough for the horizon to tilt several degrees to the left. Ling Tian froze.

Darkness began creeping inward from the edges of his vision. His heartbeat, which had been elevated from exertion, suddenly felt unpleasantly fragile. Cold sweat formed across his back despite the midday sun. Ling Tian took one step toward the pine where he had left the food. His knee buckled. The bronze weapon slipped from his hand and struck the dirt. Ling Tian followed it down. He caught himself on both palms, but the arms supporting him began shaking almost immediately.

For several seconds, confusion arrived before fear. His body had been functioning normally moments earlier. Now it appeared to have collectively resigned. Ling Tian lowered himself onto one side before his elbows could collapse. The Earth Qi continued rotating. Another familiar pulse moved through his body. No improvement. That was important. Whatever was happening, the deposit could not correct it. Ling Tian forced himself to inventory symptoms. His hands trembled badly. Cold, clammy sweat coated his skin.

His vision remained narrow and slightly distorted. Nausea rolled through an almost painfully empty stomach. His concentration had become noticeably sluggish, and the hollow weakness inside his limbs felt completely different from ordinary muscle fatigue. Recognition arrived. Not certainty. Enough. Blood sugar. Or something functionally similar. Ling Tian shut his eyes.

"You idiot." The words came out thin and breathless. He had suspected this. The hunger during the morning had already warned him. He simply had not appreciated the scale. Earth Qi did not create biological energy. At least not at his current level. It allowed his body to keep operating after normal fatigue should have forced him to stop. That was profoundly useful. It was also dangerous. Muscular exhaustion served as a limit.

When a normal person pushed hard enough, performance deteriorated until continued activity became difficult or impossible. Ling Tian had altered that equation. His muscles began failing. Earth Qi restored function. So he pushed again. The muscles failed again. The Qi responded again. Meanwhile, the deeper energy reserves supporting all of those repeated efforts continued disappearing. He had spent the entire morning climbing difficult terrain.

Then he performed repeated maximum-effort sprints while carrying a heavy weapon. Then he had spent an extended period smashing that weapon into a tree hard enough to split the trunk. The original body was malnourished. His food intake remained pathetic. There had never been enough fuel for this workload. Earth Qi had simply prevented the engine from sounding unhealthy while the tank emptied. Ling Tian almost laughed. The attempt produced a weak cough instead. The mountain provided no sympathy.

Magic had not abolished the need for energy. Maybe high-level cultivation eventually did. Perhaps powerful cultivators refined Qi directly into whatever their bodies required. Stories from the original boy's world spoke of experts capable of fasting for months, so some mechanism clearly existed beyond ordinary nutrition. Ling Tian was nowhere near it. One drop of Earth Qi did not make starvation optional. He tried to push himself into a seated position. His arms immediately began shaking harder. Ling Tian stopped.

Food. The supplies were beneath the pine. He turned his head. Approximately twenty meters away. Twenty meters had been meaningless earlier. Now it resembled a commute. Ling Tian rolled onto his stomach. His pride offered no useful alternative. He began crawling. The packed dirt scraped against his palms and knees. His movements were slow enough to be insulting. A few minutes ago, he had been capable of sprinting across the plateau repeatedly without meaningful muscular failure.

Now reaching a tree required careful resource allocation. Ling Tian dragged himself another meter. His stomach cramped violently. He paused until the nausea faded. Then continued. The Earth Qi pulsed again. Still useless. Ling Tian became mildly offended.

"Impact resistance." He moved one arm forward.

"Excellent." Pulled himself ahead.

"Recovery." Another movement.

"Very impressive." His vision narrowed again.

"No emergency food generation." He eventually reached the pine. The herb sack sat beneath the branches exactly where he had left it, bulging with rare medicinal plants worth more money than he had ever personally held in this world. At the moment, it might as well have contained decorative rocks. Ling Tian grabbed the small food parcel beside it. His fingers shook too badly to untie the wrapping properly. He tore it open.

The dried meat inside was hard, oversalted, and probably produced from an animal whose identity local merchants considered commercially unnecessary. Ling Tian shoved it into his mouth. Chewing felt exhausting. He forced himself to continue. The meat was not ideal for a suspected blood-sugar crash, but ideal nutrition had ceased being an available service. He swallowed and reached for the bitter roots. One disappeared quickly. Then another. They tasted like damp wood mixed with regret. Ling Tian ate them anyway.

He considered the remaining raw millet and rejected it. Uncooked grain would take too long to process, and his stomach already felt close to rebellion. Instead, he lay flat beneath the pine. The branches above shifted slowly in the wind. Ling Tian concentrated on breathing. There was nothing else to do. He had identified the likely cause. He had stopped exerting himself. He had eaten what was available. Panic would only increase the workload. Minutes passed. Gradually, the shaking weakened.

The darkness around the edges of his vision retreated. His heartbeat settled into something that no longer felt immediately alarming. The nausea remained, but the violent edge faded into a deep hollow ache. Ling Tian stayed where he was. He did not immediately stand just because standing had become possible again. That lesson, at least, seemed to be penetrating. He stared through the pine branches and reconsidered the entire experiment. The Earth Qi itself had not noticeably diminished. That was the strange part.

The tiny deposit inside his Dantian still felt almost identical to when the day began. It had supported repeated recovery, reinforced his skeleton, dispersed impact, and enhanced his physical output without apparently consuming itself. The body had paid instead. Perhaps the Qi acted as a catalyst. Perhaps it accelerated natural processes and forced them to consume nutrients at a vastly increased rate. Perhaps it simply allowed muscles to access stored energy faster than normal.

Ling Tian could not determine which explanation was correct. The conclusion remained the same regardless. His previous diet was no longer viable. He had been budgeting food for the needs of a chronically underfed mortal child. That calculation was obsolete. A cultivator capable of producing several times the physical workload required substantially more biological input, especially if Earth Qi continually removed the fatigue that normally prevented overexertion. Ling Tian rubbed one hand across his face.

This was almost funny. Cultivation had solved his weakness problem by creating a supply-chain crisis. His eyes shifted toward the remaining food. Almost nothing. The provisions he expected to last another two days had effectively disappeared. The scraps he had just eaten would stabilize him. They would not refill the reserves he had burned through. Further training was impossible. Not merely inadvisable. Impossible. Ling Tian slowly sat up against the pine. His limbs felt hollow rather than sore.

That distinction was useful. No major joint pain. No torn muscles. No obvious structural injury. His body had survived the workload remarkably well. The fuel system had failed first. He mentally summarized the plateau results. He let his head rest against the tree trunk.

"The operating expenses of this body are going to bankrupt me." His voice sounded tired enough to make the complaint almost sincere. A moment later, his gaze landed on the herb sack. Ling Tian stopped. The canvas bulged with Crimson Starpetals, Frostvein Moss, and Ironwood Roots. His financial problem was not actually the problem anymore. Liquidity was. He was carrying more value than he needed to purchase proper food. The value merely remained trapped in botanical form. Ling Tian's expression slowly changed.

Right. Hua City. The solution was obvious. Sell the herbs. Convert rare inventory into currency. Convert currency into calories. Preferably a very large number of calories. Meat. Rice. Fat. Starchy vegetables. Anything that provided enough actual energy to support the body he was building rather than merely keeping his organs from shutting down between herb runs. Ling Tian remained beneath the pine until standing no longer caused the world to tilt. Then he rose carefully. His knees trembled once but held.

He retrieved the sealed bronze sword from the center of the clearing. The weapon felt much heavier now. That observation amused him. Nothing about the bronze had changed. The available strength behind it had. Ling Tian rested the tip of the scabbard against the dirt and leaned some of his weight onto it. The ancient weapon had now served as a sword, club, climbing tool, counterweight, and walking stick in less than twenty-four hours. Flexible asset. He could respect that.

Ling Tian returned to the pine and lifted the herb sack over one shoulder. The weight dragged heavily against his depleted body. He adjusted it until the pressure became tolerable. The correct destination was not the shack. There was barely any food waiting there. Returning home first would only add distance. He needed Hua City now. The rare herbs had to be sold before his metabolism decided to perform another hostile takeover. Ling Tian looked once toward the fallen pine.

The plateau had provided exactly what he wanted. He knew how fast he could move. He knew roughly how hard he could hit. He knew the Earth Qi could reinforce his body well beyond mortal limits. And he had discovered the invoice attached to every one of those improvements. The information had been expensive. Still cheaper than discovering it during combat. Ling Tian turned toward the descending trail. This time, he did not run. He moved slowly, leaning against the bronze weapon whenever the terrain became steep.

The pace felt humiliating after the morning's performance, but pride had recently demonstrated poor nutritional value. Somewhere below the mountain, Hua City waited with its usual crowds, smells, danger, and commercial opportunity. Ling Tian tightened his grip on the bronze walking stick and started down. His new body had officially exceeded the capabilities of his old supply chain. It was time to upgrade the logistics.